I'm Chris Winters

Specialists and intermediaries aren't always bad...

Ben Hammersley doesn’t
like real estate agents. I can understand why – many people have
a horror story about a bad agent: the agent was working both sides
without disclosure, the agent was steering you only toward houses
listed with their agency, the agent got a kickback from the seller to
forget mentioning the sewage that backs up in the basement after heavy
rains, and so on.

Of course, I also understand that one of the wonderful things about
the internet is the disintermediation -- you can learn about anything
you want on your own time, without pesky salesmen trying to steer you
in the direction of larger commissions. You can read what real people
say about a product or service and get a sense of typical problems or
surprising features. (That can lead to other problems with astroturfing and
other forms of unreliable sources. But we'll ignore that for now.)

The problem I have with dismissing whole groups of people like this
is that they can actually perform hugely valuable tasks, especially
for lazy people like me. Leaving aside the actual transaction, just
finding a house that balances all your needs -- money, location, size,
style, neighbors, schools, current value, future value, amount of
work, yard, porch, sunlight, ... -- is hard.

That's not even considering that you may have needs you don't even
realize, or that with exposure to certain types of houses your
opinions might change. A good agent has a huge amount of domain
knowledge about neighborhoods and trends, knowledge that, even if you
could absorb it from the internet, would take you a ton of time to do
so.

Not only that, a good agent has also gone through all phases of
your experience many, many times. So, for instance, she'll understand
that in the face of a remarkable feature (like a gorgeous kitchen) you
may be unconsciously tempted to underestimate the work needed to get
that upper floor in livable shape. Or she'll hear watercooler talk
about how the owner of a particular property won't let buyers get a
home inspection and steer you away from that place.

..or a thousand other things that by themselves may not be huge but
put together mean that I don't have to make looking for a house a
fulltime job. And I think that deserves a little respect.